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Facebook's mobile-application ads have been tested by about 20% of the elite iOS developers, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg says. That's good news for Facebook, which sees the ads as one of the few ways to earn revenue from its developer ecosystem on mobile platforms. "Facebook can't derive fees or virtual currency revenue from mobile apps, because they exist on platforms operated by ... Google and Apple. As users have migrated to mobile devices, Facebook's payments revenues has stalled because of this," Kim-Mai Cutler writes.

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Mobile game cross-promotion network Chartboost is debuting a back-end service for in-app purchasing called Chartboost Store. The service "will make it easier for studios to add new items and pricing on the fly, instead of having to go through a time-consuming update process," Kim-Mai Cutler writes. The store includes analytics that should be especially appreciated by small-game developers, Cutler notes. The beta version is free, but the company will charge 10% of revenue when the full version launches later in 2013.

Japan-based Kii Corp is offering a service to developers interested in cracking the Chinese applications market. The service includes connection to the Chinese social nets, distribution to Chinese app stores, integration of the foreign payment system, and "a mobile-backend-as-a-service product called Kii Cloud, which handles in-app analytics, cloud storage, user and data management," Kim-Mai Cutler writes.

Company sources say mobile monetization platform Tapjoy might have laid off 10% of its workforce, approximately 20 people, in a restructuring move. The company that started as Offerpal has had to change business models over the years after resistance from Facebook and Apple, and finally settled on a pay-per-install mobile ad network, Kim-Mai Cutler writes. Tapjoy's Patrick Seybold says the reorganization will "position the company for continued growth."

Ranked by U.S. iPhone usage, not by downloads, game applications such as FlipSide5's Touch Hockey and Big Duck Games' Flow rank right up there with category leaders Words With Friends and Temple Run, according to Onavo Insights. Zynga and Imangi maintain the broadest reach. "Is it weird that totally bootstrapped teams like Imangi can outrun ... multibillion dollar companies like EA on iOS? Yes, but this is the nature of the iOS platform, with its comparatively low barriers to entry," Kim-Mai Cutler writes.

Application developers such as Storm8 unwrapped big numbers on Christmas, Kim-Mai Cutler writes. The casual gaming company saw 2 million downloads on Christmas, along with 2.5 million hours of gameplay and more than quadruple the normal average revenue per daily active user. Top in-app items include a virtual holiday tree, gingerbread purse and snow globe, according to this infographic.